Instructional Design

On Leadership

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / Leave a comment

Welcome to the Fall 2022 semester, everyone! It is that time of year when everything gets busy and everyone gets tired. It’s also that time of year when I get reflective about my own goals and accomplishments. This semester, one of my classes is about leadership, so that’s the topic of my reflection today. Am I a leader?

The semester started with a Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire. The exercise reminded me of the Emergenetics instrument that I completed when I started working as an instructional designer. Emergenetics identified me as a mixture of Analytical and Conceptual, meaning that I have big ideas and then I figure out data-driven ways to make them happen. The overall description seemed pretty accurate, so I was excited to see how this leadership questionnaire would portray me.

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Once a teacher, always a teacher

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / 4 Comments

This morning, I took the dogs outside and when I didn’t immediately melt under Texas heat, I realized that it is September. In fact, it’s almost the middle of September. Since I left teaching middle school, I’ve found myself far less capable of tracking time. I thought time had no meaning during the pandemic lockdowns; I had no idea people with “regular” jobs had to work so hard to know what month it is!

This year was the first year in my entire life that I didn’t have a true summer, and I honestly frequently forgot that it was summer until I’d walk outside of the house. Between working full time as an Instructional Designer and taking two intensive 10-week doctoral courses, June to August was actually the busiest couple months of my year so far, maybe even of my life so far.

Now that I’ve made it to the other side of that stressful semester, it’s time to take a step back and do some reflecting. As I do at the end of every semester, I like to think about what I’ve learned, what I’ve gained, and what I need to keep doing, but this time I’m finding myself in the middle of an identity crisis.

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Reflecting on the Pandemic Journey

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / Leave a comment

Anybody that is a frequent visitor to this blog probably knows by now that I like to use this as a medium to complete my coursework as much as possible. It helps me to think through the assignment when I reflect on it here, and I think it makes for a better submission than a plain old paper.

This weekend saw the start of my first summer semester of my doctoral program. I’ve taken summer classes in the past, but they were short, intensive 5-week courses. This summer, and my next several summers, will be filled with two full 10-week courses. And this summer, I’m taking Statistical Methods and Distance Learning. One of those courses is much more terrifying to me than the other. Can you guess which one?

Anyway, the first assignment in Distance Learning is to reflect on how the pandemic changed the way we used technology to live and interact in work and school, an apt and timely reflective assignment.

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Defining the Field

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / 1 Comment

It is my personal goal to get back to utilizing this blog more frequently to reflect on all of my roles: Instructional Designer, Adjunct Lecturer, and Doctoral Student. Just as I have done in the past, today I’m going to share one of my assignments with the world. In my Issues in Instructional Technology course, we were tasked with researching the various labels and definitions of the field of Instructional Design and Technology or the field of Instructional Systems Design and Technology or the field of Educational Technology, etc., in order to define and label the field as we see it.

So here is my definition and label of the field where I now find myself fully immersed. It doesn’t have the snazzy, sometimes snarky, tone of other blogs, but I think you’ll find it an interesting read.

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Introducing Mrs. Hebert, Instructional Designer (plus a review of Mentimeter)

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / 2 Comments

I think it is time to make my career change Blog-Official. Back on February 1st, I started a new career path as an Instructional Designer, and I have never been happier than I’ve been these past couple months. It was not easy for me to walk away from the classroom, and I spent a lot of time second-guessing my own decision to make this move, but I know this was the right move for me. Considering my career has been on this trajectory since my first Instructional Design course, I’m actually a little surprised at myself for feeling so conflicted.

This blog was originally born from a master’s course assignment and I’ve used it over the past few years as a place to reflect on my work, both as a teacher and student. I’ve talked about different educational technology tools that I’ve discovered and loved. I’ve talked about issues in education. I’ve reflected on my own struggles as a teacher and as a student, first in my master’s program and now as a doctoral student. The important part for me has always been reflection. I’ve learned and grown so much since I wrote my first post here, and I whole-heartedly believe that reflection is the most important aspect of learning and growth. And so, moving forward, I intend to keep that theme. I may one day bring myself to change the name of this website from Mrs. Hebert’s Classroom to something else, but regardless of the name, this will always be my place to reflect and learn from my own practices. If you’re reading this, I hope you are able to learn from my reflections, and I hope that you take some time to reflect on your own practices in your profession.

I chose today to write my first reflection as an Instructional Designer because today I led my first live professional development seminar. In February, I was told that my first topic would be RUBRICS. Throughout March, I designed and developed a 60-minute webinar on that topic, taking my presentation through two rounds of feedback with my team (who are the best, most supportive, intelligent people!). All my effort culminated in a wildly successful seminar today.

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